


City of Roses

by scornkitty



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asexual Character, F/M, Light Angst, Magic, More like maudlin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-01
Packaged: 2018-09-03 12:55:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8714755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scornkitty/pseuds/scornkitty
Summary: I was walking to the bus stop today and really noticing all of the delightful moss along my walk and it made me think of Briar. I wrote this on my iPhone during the commute to school. It could probably use a lot more work, but if I hold it back for editing I'll probably never touch it again, so have it as is. Sorry if it's not as good as it could be.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was walking to the bus stop today and really noticing all of the delightful moss along my walk and it made me think of Briar. I wrote this on my iPhone during the commute to school. 
> 
> It could probably use a lot more work, but if I hold it back for editing I'll probably never touch it again, so have it as is. Sorry if it's not as good as it could be.

Briar loves Portland. Of all the cities that he has spent time grafting fruit bearing branches onto consenting trees and scattering quick-growing seeds on public plots where they would sprout-fruit-seed and then sprout again within weeks in cities around the world, Portland feels like it is his. 

Moss covered for the for the Moss boy, the grey skied Rose City.

Reminders of the things that matter and the people he loves. He's seriously been thinking about settling down here. 

Tris had laughed when he told her over drinks, "You're a dandelion seed in the wind Briar Moss. I don't think you'll ever settle down."

Says the wind, he thought, swallowing the words. Tris had no truck with that kind of talk and her temper was still hair trigger. They didn't get to talk often enough these days for him to want to provoke it. 

"Still, I'd think you'd love it there, Coppercurls. Grey skies and rain, not far from a coast that is more grey skies and rain with added wind. Which you'd know if you'd ever visit."

He had met her in New Orleans, which had become a near yearly tradition as she stopped there to ward off yet another hurricane threat. 

("Building a city below sea level, of all the nonsensical things. God knows the government won't help them if I let them get hit. I learned that the hard way."

She had been halfway across the world dealing with an earthquake in a developing country and had figured at least the US had the resources to help their citizens. But then they didn't even try. 

"You can't be everywhere, Coppercurls." he'd told her as the sky cried the tears his hard-headed weather witch would never let out, "One person can only do so much." She had never gotten over the guilt. Tris had always taken everything onto herself.)

"You know I'm too busy to visit, Briar. I do stop off in Seattle every couple years to make some adjustments that will smoothly transition that fault instead of the having the big quake expected within the next hundred years," she mused. "I might be able to do that maintenance from Portland, but you know that I can't afford to spend time in a safe city like that when, I swear, there's more natural disasters than I can keep up with happening all over the world."

He knew she would never take a break when she was needed, and unless she ever found a weather witch that could work on her scale, which felt less and less likely as the years passed, she would never retire. Tris would kill herself one day trying to harness the power of an earthquake or a storm or a volcano, long after she had ought to have settled down into some easier work.

He missed her. He had done his duty, did his time with Rosethorn and Crane, traveled all over the world developing seeds that could grow with almost no water, plants that could break down pollutants or remove metals from soils, crops that grew in extreme conditions, and then when they eventually passed away, joined the fight to end food deserts by helping organize the urban gardening movement. He still went back to the labs to help any time a new epidemic was breaking out and planned to continue doing that until the day he died.

He was getting older and done as much as one man can and thought it was time, not to retire, but to settle down in a city where moss grew on the curbs and the trees were green nearly year round. Nobody noticed his tattoos except to exclaim over them and the occasionally tattoo artist that asked if he would allow them access to magical ink. 

(He would not, considering he didn't know how it worked or how it would affect someone who wasn't a plant mage themselves.)

He missed all the girls, but his heart ached for Rosethorn and Tris. One was gone and the other was the wind. Moss city full of rain and roses.

"It's late." He said after a little while more catching up, knocking back the whiskey left in his cup.

Tris laughed at him, grey eyes knowing. "Time for bed then thief boy."

This simple companionship was what he missed most. Her lying on the side of the bed closest to the open window, the uneven breathing of someone with an overactive mind still awake.

They would lie there together not talking into the deep silence of the night, him whispering to plants nearby through his magic, her listening to the breezes, occasionally reaching through the bond to listen in on what the other was doing, until exhaustion set in and they could stay awake no longer. 

He woke up before her the next morning. He always did. Tris's riotous hair was attempting to escape the neat braids she always wore—a terrifying prospect, but endearing nonetheless.

Briar watched her sleep for a few moments before heading out to fetch breakfast. Beignets and black coffee for the both of them. 

He settled in cross legged at the end of the bed and began picking off little pieces of the buns and hitting her in the face with them. Tris groggily opened her grey eyes after the fifth piece bounced off her nose, scowling. She sat up and groped for her glasses on the headboard. He held out the coffee as a peace offering, which she less than graciously accepted, but he didn't get zapped with static shock so he was calling it a win.

Soon, she would be caffeinated, functional, and jetting off to wherever she was needed next: rising seas in an island country, tsunami from an off shore quake, a raging fire from a freak lightning strike. Wherever the winds and the earth told her she was needed, an honest-to-god real life superhero.

He was heading back to Portland. It was time to start looking for a small house with a mossy roof and a rose garden. He was working on the magical theory for trees that could sequester more carbon dioxide than normal, so he'd need a workroom. Maybe he could also buy a plot to section out into small areas for a community garden somewhere nearby. 

If the wind wouldn't come to him, and it wouldn't, then he'd gladly accept the rain. That's where moss thrives anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> I headcanon Tris as ace. Briar respects that, her drive to do good, and is hopelessly in love with her. Tris loves him too, but is busy being a bad ass and saving the world. Girl has a calling.
> 
> Hopefully, she will find an apprentice that's on her level soon and eventually they will be able to putter around Portland together, probably getting into trouble. I, personally, imagine that they get into more scrapes together than alone.
> 
> I think they'd both like it here, and Tris would love the storms of the Oregon coast. During high winds, the crashing waves and resulting spray are unbelievable in Boiler Bay and the surrounding area.


End file.
